


Better Lock It in Your Pocket (or, Ten Secrets about Nikolai Romanov, as kept by Clint Barton)

by silverfoxflower



Category: Avengers, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Genderswap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverfoxflower/pseuds/silverfoxflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint knows the scary, secret truth: Nikolai is a dork. He just has the world’s best poker face about it. After seven years serving as Nikolai’s BFF and occasional bed warmer (in Soviet Russia, you don’t fuck Nikolai Romanov, Nikolai Romanov fucks <i>you</i>), Clint has gathered a heap of intel which he has been threatened under pain of death multiple times never to disclose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Lock It in Your Pocket (or, Ten Secrets about Nikolai Romanov, as kept by Clint Barton)

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be crack, and then it descended into very aggressive angst(?) BTW, I adore male!Natasha but I'm still working on his characterization. I'm afraid that this is not one of those stories that focus on how being male would particularly change Natasha's experience.
> 
>  **Warnings/Contents:** Alludes to past possible abuse, Clint's POV, no fix-it for Phil :(
> 
>  **Written for:** this [prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/6565.html?thread=10642853#t10642853) at [](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/profile)[**avengerkink**](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/)

Nikolai Romanov is a cool-eyed, long-legged beauty who’d kill a man as soon as look at him.

At least that was the word around the SHIELD barracks. Clint knows the scary, secret truth: Nikolai is a dork. He just has the world’s best poker face about it. After seven years serving as Nikolai’s BFF and occasional bed warmer (in Soviet Russia, you don’t fuck Nikolai Romanov, Nikolai Romanov fucks _you_ ), Clint has gathered a heap of intel which he has been threatened under pain of death multiple times never to disclose.

 

Secret Number 1:

Those catsuits? Aren’t particularly comfortable or breathable or even flexible. Clint tried one on once and _fuck_ , he’ll admit to crying like a little baby girl when his dick its lost circulation. The working theory is that Nikolai wears them because he is vaguely European. The truth is because he likes the way his ass looks in them.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, Nikolai Romanov is a _vain_ motherfucker.

 

Secret Number 2:

He really is that flexible. And aw yeah does Clint reap the benefits.

 

Secret Number 3:

Nikolai has a soft spot for children. Once, when they were on a reconnaissance mission in Bulgaria, he broke cover when he saw that a shipment of child slaves were going to pass through the territory and SHIELD had ordered their agents to _stand down_. After cursing him out under his breath, Clint smashed his earpiece and joined in the fray. They managed to get the kids to safety, but were led back to headquarters in cuffs. If it wasn’t for Phil and the magic of his BAMF, they would’ve probably been quietly shipped off to a prison in the middle of nowhere.

Ironically, Nikolai is also _incredibly awkward_ around children. It doesn’t help that his default for entertaining them is knife tricks.

 

Secret Number 4:

Nikolai _hates_ playing the honeypot. He’ll do it, because for whatever reason (coughcough- _ass_ -coughcough), the mark will always turn out to have a thing for finely-featured redheads with gorgeous green eyes. And equally gorgeous thighs. Hell, even supposedly straight guys can’t resist Nikolai’s swag.

But it’s a curse more than it’s a gift because Nikolai, as previously stated, would rather avoid playing the love interest.

It’s not because of the touching. Clint doesn’t know the specifics but something really shitty happened in Nikolai’s past that has made it easy for him to separate his body from his mind, and it would take more than a couple of half-hearted gropes to faze him.

It’s not because of the image thing, because one, Nikolai could care less about that and two, any wet-behind-the-ears SHIELD recruit stupid enough to think that Nikolai earned his position on his back is sure to be reminded of how fucking _deadly_ this son of a bitch is sooner rather than later.

It is, strangely enough, because Nikolai is afraid of becoming attached. Although 99.99% of their marks are total scum and should be put down like the dogs they are without a single pang of guilt, there are always the times when SHIELD’s “operate in the grey” policy gets really difficult to follow. Like one mission in Venezuela, when Nikolai was in deep cover as a tutor to the children of a drug lord. He seduced the drug lord’s wife, a gentle, lonely woman who was desperate for attention and had access to her husband’s records.

She was gunned down by her husband’s men for her betrayal, and even now, Nikolai has moments of deep melancholy when he hears the sound of church bells. It makes Clint wonder if he actually fell in love with her.

 

Secret Number 5:

It’s cute, because Nikolai thinks he’s being sneaky, but all of the Avengers (okay, maybe minus Thor, because who fuck knows what that guy thinks about?) have already caught onto the reason why every other movie night is a rom com. But Nikolai will never ask outright and risk admitting the truth that he _likes them_. Instead, he uses all of his super special powers of manipulation to convince Pepper to convince Tony that popping in The Notebook will totally get him laid that night (it didn’t). Or to make Steve make everyone watch Mean Girls because it is a “vital representation of pop culture”. Once, the DVD player just started playing Nanny Diaries and no one admitted to putting in the DVD. Jesus.

 

Secret Number 6:

Budapest.

Involved, probably, hallucinogenic drugs.

The fact that Clint’s still not sure, after all these years, which one of them was _on_ the drugs and which one of them was sober means that he probably should take the fifth on this one.

 

Secret Number 7:

Nikolai shaves, um, everywhere. For catsuit reasons. And calls Clint a pervert for enjoying this more than he should.

 

Secret Number 8:

The thigh move is unfortunately not as fun in bed as it looks. Sadface.

 

Secret Number 9:

Nikolai took the news of Phil’s death harder than anybody, even Clint, who still lives with the guilt that he _helped Loki kill him_. It’s probably because Phil was the closest thing to a father figure that either of them had, even though he was not much older, and how fucked up was that, that they both idolized a man who sent them on life-threatening missions. But Phil always played it straight. Never kept information from them, never fucked them over, even when Fury demanded otherwise. And he always had their backs. He’d _never_ order them to do something that he wasn’t willing to do himself, and somehow, Clint had always thought that it would be the three of them against the world. God knows it wasn’t like Phil was going to get married and have kids.

Not now anyways.

After they were both put on “mental health leave” after the Loki thing, Clint had gone on a bender. Guzzled alcohol and sang wildly off-key and picked fights. Nikolai, of course, was with him all the way. Including dragging Clint back to their hotel room and letting him sob grossly all over Nikolai’s shoulder until the sun came up.

It took a couple weekends of this before Clint woke up one morning and realized that he was over the worst of it. Phil’s death was still, and forever would be, a bullet that tore through Clint’s chest, the wound sloppily stitched together and seeping blood through the bandage. One day, though, it would knit together, leaving nothing but a jagged scar and an ache on a cold day.

For Nikolai, though …

Nikolai never really got over Phil’s death. Nikolai doesn’t really “get over” _anyone’s_ deaths, as much as he doesn’t show it, which is why Clint had been ready to put an arrow through Tony’s throat when he called Nikolai an _emotionless trainwreck_ for accepting a mission during Phil’s funeral. For Nikolai, every death is a brick in the wall he is building between himself and the outside world. One of these days, that wall will be sealed up, effectively trapping Nikolai in the hell that is his own mind.

But as long as a crack, just the barest sliver of space, Clint will be right there slipping knock-knock jokes through the brick and singing “Pocketful of Sunshine” until they’re both dragged away to separate psychiatric institutions.

 

Secret Number 10:

Nikolai doesn’t talk much, but he talks to Clint. In bed, fitted together in the dark. When they’re on a mission, speaking in nonsensical code over the comms. Just to shut Clint up, especially when he starts singing, _hey Nikky, you’re so fine_.

Even though they’re whatever, a family-unit now with the whole Avengers thing (and ugh, it was a terrible idea to let Tony onto that metaphor because he abruptly designated himself the father, Steve the mother, Thor as the cousin who everyone agrees is touched in the head, Bruce as the older brother with anger issues who had to move back in with mommy and daddy, and Nikolai and Clint as the creepily co-dependent, possibly incestuous brothers, at which point Nikolai had smacked Tony upside the head) and Clint is happy – really! – to see Nikolai bonding with human beings instead of weapons, there is still no one in the world who understands Nikolai like Clint does. And vice versa.

They’re like the two sides of a coin, bound – if not by fate – then by their entangled history and uncertain future.

And that’s reason enough for Clint to keep Nikolai’s secrets with him to the grave.

**Author's Note:**

> The marvelously talented whipbogard has drawn [Nikolai](http://whipbogard.tumblr.com/image/30479531136)! /smooches forever
> 
> By the way, of any of you are interested in chatting, squeeing over gifs or reading snippets of my WIPs, feel free to follow me at [my tumblr](http://beatingsofabesottedheart.tumblr.com).


End file.
